firstlast
by Roses of Sharon
Summary: o4::because he will love her. The incomplete sequel to 'she will be loved.' FugaMiko.
1. resistance

first_last_

experiment #o1.

x0x

The first time you saw her, you could never have believed that she could be the person she is - a killer, cold and hard and glorious. Pale pink hair framed a lightly tanned face with delicate features, and thin arms swung innocently at her sides. You thought she was beautiful, like the porcelain dolls your younger sister once played with. Before the bombs took her, you think now, and your eyes harden, a little. But this… this woman cannot be one of them, cannot possibly a monster like those who dropped those bombs.

The second time you see her, you recognize her for who she is, and not only because she is surrounded by _them_. _They _are the monsters, and you can see this at the first glance into their dark eyes - dark, no matter the color - and sharp, strong teeth. They are beautiful, too; beautiful and silken and deadly. She turns to meet your eyes, burning green scorching you, and she smiles, baring rows of perfect teeth. _Monster_, you think, but by the time you raise your hand to your gun and open your mouth to call, they are gone.

Later, that evening, you sit alone on your ratty old couch in your cold apartment and watch as the chancellor is assassinated. You do not feel very sorry; what did he, after all, do for your country? Nothing at all. The bombs still drop, and the children still die, and your sister is not avenged.

But you wonder, a little. You wonder if you could have prevented this. And you wonder if it should have changed you, looking a killer in the eyes. You decide, finally, that it hasn't, and then you wonder what that means.

x0x

The voice comes crackling over the cheap equipment. "Sakura," Shikamaru says, and, through the ease of long practice, she does not even turn her head toward the voice. She has seen new recruits do that, and been shot for it - for turning towards a person who is not there.

"Shikamaru," she whispers, lips barely moving. She tilts her head forward as though staring down at her sandals. They are new, barely worn, and they hurt, a bit. She moves to the side of the belt and grasps the railing, lifting her right foot as though assessing the damage. Dyed black strands swings in front of her face.

"Ino is about to make the drop," he says, and she drops her right foot, lifting her left in its place and clumsily fiddling with the straps.

Sakura hears Ino before she can see her, careening up the belt on outdated skates. "Watch out," she giggles drunkenly, swinging a crystal bottle in one hand. _2045_, Sakura notes; a good year, before the war. _It is really too bad that she is about to waste it_. But Ino needs a good wine to play her part: that of a drunken rich girl who has abruptly decided that she needs to play with the populace.

Acting as though she has just noticed the blonde, Sakura widens her eyes and backs up even farther along the railing, thankful that she is not carrying a bag. "_Ten_," Shikamaru says into her earpiece. "_Five_," and Sakura's eyes widen even farther as she frantically tries to get out of the way. "_One_," he says, and Ino crashes into her, the crystal bottle shattering as the two women collide.

"Oops," Ino giggles, pale blue eyes dancing with laughter and recognition. "Sorry, _chica_." And then she is off, leaving Sakura dripping wine, with crystal shards digging into her clothing, and a small package clutched in her hand. She manages, barely, to maintain the flabbergasted expression long enough for the people behind her on the belt to move on, carefully drifting past her shocked figure, and then she begins walking herself, a bit regretfully, a bit bitterly.

No one stops to help her, and that is what disappoints her the most. Once, she recalls, this city was beautiful. She is not old enough to have seen it in its prime, when the machines were still glistening-new and the people still proud to live in the most advanced city in the world, but Tsunade-hime has the photographs and video discs that show the city as it was.

People danced, in the videos. People loved and laughed and smiled for the camera, and there were bright stars in the sky and grass sprouted along the pavement.

Now there is only cold, gray metal and artificially bright colors.

Sakura goes home.

x0x

"Ino."

The girl does a spin on the tip of a skate, bright scarf whirling for a few seconds after she has stopped. "Shikamaru?" she asks, moving along the path into a bathroom stall. He snorts.

"Who else?"

"I made the drop," she tells him, lips barely moving as the skates she wears detransform, the wheels collapsing into the sole. The scarf is dropped into a cubbyhole she can barely reach, high up against the supports, and her jacket soon follows it as she draws a green pea coat from inside.

"I know," he tells her. "Sakura is rather displeased that you managed to spill such good wine."

"You can tell her that I drank most of it first," Ino informs him, walking out from under the bridge and holding a cell phone to cover the earpiece. It is an old piece, a flip mobile, long and thin. It is also most patently inoperative, but there are not many that can tell that from a distance.

Ino loves the piece, though, as she loves most of the things from before the war, and she uses it whenever she can, if only as a prop.

"I doubt that that will appease her," Shikamaru says dryly, and Ino laughs softly before snapping the mobile phone closed and swiftly removing the earpiece, slipping it into her sleeve. There is very little that appeases Sakura, anymore.

Ino remembers, though. Ino remembers the long-ago, when Sakura was just a little girl, lost and frightened and alone, a victim of yet another bomb. No one hears about the bombs anymore, here in this gleaming metal city with the wards piled so high you can barely see the sky, but Ino knows they still fall.

Ino knows they still fall, and so, for as long as they do, Ino still fights. She is Yamanaka, after all; the blood has run thin, but it never runs weak.

x0x

"Later," he says, but he knows that she has already removed the earpiece. She does not like to wear it any longer than strictly necessary, and he knows that she does not really need it anymore - it is not as though he cannot contact her in an emergency - but he would like, perhaps, to converse a little longer.

Once, she would have stayed to talk to him, maybe even visited him, here in this cold, sterile room filled with maps and pictures and humming screens. But now the cause consumes her, eats her alive and takes up all of her, her time and everything she has.

Though, he thinks almost bitterly, it is not as though he is one to speak of such things, locked away as he is in this room. He chose this life, he reminds himself, but there is a small, niggling voice that wonders if it was a mistake. But he is needed by her, needed by these people and this cause; and it is his cause, too, isn't it?

He wonders, sometimes, if it is really his cause. Maybe he did it all for Ino, the loudmouthed blonde that needed him so much, years ago. Maybe he did it all for Chouji. But Chouji is gone now, he recalls. Gone, and never coming back, lost somewhere in his own mind and trapped in his own body.

Tsunade couldn't save him, but Shikamaru still hopes, sitting here in this room. Shikamaru still hopes that maybe someday Sakura will be able to. It is a small hope, but it is hope nonetheless, and Shikamaru clings to it like a drowning man clings to his only lifesaver.

There is little enough left to hope in.

x0x

Hyuuga House is large, towering - a forbidding brick and glass building in the midst of this metal jungle, with marble walls and cherry flooring. One of the last true houses, from before the war, and one of the last to be completely fixed before the government swept through and determined that everything would be cheaper in metal.

The Hyuuga Clan was large, too, once. It is smaller now, smaller and weaker and a little more broken, a little more fractured. Though the House system was officially terminated near the end of the war, the use of it continued long after the tattoos disappeared completely from even the oldest members.

Hyuuga Hinata, then, was the current heir.

She also happened to be one of the best spies the Resistance had, but Hyuuga is supposed to be above all of that, and so it is no longer spoken of.

Her younger sister is Hanabi, Hyuuga Hanabi, dark and striking and beautiful and ferocious, all silk-covered water-steel, as had once been used for the most glorious of weapons.

Barely thirteen, and already one of the best assassins that the Hyuuga had to offer; a child in body only, and Hinata mourns this even as she recognizes the need for it. For Hyuuga is no longer a political body only, but a house of liars and thieves and killers, and not all of them for the Resistance. There are only a handful of people who know the faces of the entire Resistance, let alone the names.

Hinata has never been able to ask.

Neji, though, she knows is part of the Resistance. Neji is cousin, is brother, was best friend and confidante, until the bombs struck. They had only bombed Citadel six times, but that had been enough to kill his mother and father. The bombs had turned the wonderful boy into a desperate man, desperate for revenge and with an insatiable hunger for it, and insatiable need to fulfill what he saw as his duty. His destiny.

So Neji, she knows, is Resistance. He has two teammates, which is a bit odd, for Resistance, but Neji has always been odd. Resistance teams do not normally stay together for very long. It often takes many, many teams before the teammates really learn to work together, really learn to be a family.

Neji is lucky.

You hope you will be as lucky tomorrow noon, when you will be meeting the first of your new teammates. A blind date, you are to call it, arranged by Ino and at a suitably classy restaurant. His name is Aburame Shino, and Ino tells her that he might have been Aburame, once. No longer is there an Aburame, or an Israel, for that matter, but Hinata recalls being told about them, on her father's knee. In their prime, they were a fearsome people; a fearsome organization, and feared accordingly.

They are nothing now, just as Inuzuka is nothing and the Uchiha are nothing and the Hatake are nothing.

She herself is Hyuuga, descended from the Japans, and then from the Chinese, as her midnight blue-black hair shows. Hanabi's hair is blacker, and Neji's browner, but Hinata's hair holds a tint of blue, though it has never been dyed.

She wonders what price her mother paid for that concession.

x0x

In the old days, Kiba knows, his family trained dogs. Great white dogs with strange markings, strong and loyal.

Now they build them.

They are great robotic animals, weapons, in a way, with bones of platinum and muscles of the lightest fibers, soft fur and steel claws and glass eyes, recording the world.

And they are bugged, for Kiba, whose job it is to do the final check on the animals, and Hana before him and Tsume before her, are Resistance.

Kiba bares his teeth quietly, and a savage snarl spreads across the waiting dog's face in answer. The dogs may no longer live, but that does not mean they have lost any of their loyalty.

**x0x**

I keep writing these lovely first chapters - this one has been sitting on my computer for a few weeks now, at least - and not being able to finish them. Or even continue them, actually. So I'm going to post them as they are. If you guys like them enough, maybe I'll write a few sequels? But I'm never going to finish these stories. Just so you know.


	2. wishing

first_last_

experiment #o2.

It is somewhere between the twentieth shot and the twenty-first that Ino asks her the question, and she slurs out the answer in something like drunken epitomizing. _I love him_, she says, and downs the twenty-first as the clock strikes zero-zero. Not that she's watching. Not that she's _been _watching, counting down the hours and the minutes and the seconds until she can finally - _finally _- make her wish.

She squeezes her eyes shut and feels the numb, numb burn of the alcohol down her throat, and throws her wish away. _I wish that he would love me back_, she thinks, pushing with her all her might on a dream that will not come true. A dream that will never come true.

And then she goes home. She clambers carefully down from her bar stool and walks past Ino - who might be on her twenty-sixth or sixty-second - and past the wolf-whistling males too drunk to see her face and out the door and into the taxi and slurs out her directions, _the Uchiha manor_, she says, and hates it.

But she is going home, to as much of a home as she can get, and there's some comfort in _that_, at least. In the word, in _home_, even if the home is filled with passivity and withdrawn silences and anger instead of warmth and comfort and love. Even if Sasuke - even if _her own damn husband_, she thinks, and stuffs the thought away - won't hold her hair up as she vomits and will keep lying there, keep sleeping through it all.

Or maybe not sleeping. He might not be sleeping. But she wants him to be. She wants him to be dead, fast asleep, out like a dead lightbulb, because that would explain it. She wants him to sleep deeply, sleep like the dead, because then maybe she could push away his unresponsiveness. Maybe then she could rationalize the fact that he has never, _not once_, gotten up to help her.

Maybe that's why she does this, she thinks, giddily. Maybe that's why she likes going out and drinking alcohol and coming back and throwing it all up. Maybe that's why. Maybe she's waiting.

But no matter how long she waits, no one will ever come. The thought strikes her like a hammer, like a warhammer with huge steel blades and a thick wooden shaft, and though she has often thought it before, it somehow hurts more this time. And she cries. She sits down on the floor in the bathroom and watches her husband through the open door and dreams that he stands up. That he stands up and walks over and helps her up; wipes her face and kisses her lips, like he hasn't done since their wedding.

He doesn't.

And though that doesn't surprise her, the tears trickle down her face nonetheless. They don't surprise her, either.

She sits there, on the coldclean_hard_ floor, and she thinks. She thinks about giving her first kiss to a dead_dying_ man_criminal _when she is thirteen; she thinks about the twist of her kunai in his heart and the shock in his eyes and the way her boot feels against his check as she kicks him off the cliff. She thinks of the dark taint left on her lips.

(She wonders if this is why Sasuke will not kiss her.)

And then she wonders about him, because she has spent too much time on him already, so what is a few more minutes? A few more hours? A few more lifetimes? Nothing. So she sits on the floor and she wonders who got _his _first (kissfuck_whatever_). She wonders if it was some girl in Sound, with silky hair and a beautiful face. She wonders if it was a kunoichi, or a civilian; she wonders if he thought he loved her and if she loved him and if he paid her afterwards.

(She paid. She paid in blood and innocence and _firsts_, which are important in a way that shinobi and men do not understand. In a way _she _no longer understands.)

It's not important, though. It's not important. Not anymore.

And so she picks herself up off the ground and steps into the shower and the water is numbing first and burning after, and when she comes out he is gone.

It does not surprise her.

He is always gone by the time she comes out, no matter how slow or how fast or how early or how late she showers. He is always there when she goes in and missing when she comes out, and she thinks there is some symbolism in that. There has to be.

_You love him_, she reminds herself as she stands in front of the mirror, studying her body. Hard and lithe and tough, with small breasts and slim hips and long legs. Her eyes are cold and her skin is pale under the tan, and her nose has only been broken twice. It has healed flawlessly both times, but there are tiny scars, if one knows where to look. She does.

Her hair falls to her shoulders, pink and silky and smooth. _Kin was wrong_, Sakura thinks. _Hair is as important to kunoichi as kunai_. And then she picks up the brush and begins her hundred strokes. It is a ritual she follows as rigorously as she follows her training, because it _is _part of her training.

And then she walks downstairs. Her breakfast sits steaming on the sideboard, where Sasuke leaves it before he begins his day. As she munches on her apple and digs into her oatmeal, she wonders what he has decided to do today.

_Sasuke may be a control freak_, she thinks, almost fondly almost bitterly. _But he refuses to follow a schedule. Paranoia_, she adds. A result of his years in Sound, she wants to believe, but she knows it is a result of his years here.

Almost idly, she wonders how many assassination attempts there are. It is probably a record, or would be, if anyone kept track of such things. Sasuke has an almost uncanny ability to escape assassination. To escape death. It is like a gift.

Some days she wishes he didn't have it. Some days she wishes that she could die, instead.

But then she reminds herself that she loves him, or used to love him, and still loves Naruto (like brother, like best friend, like a past lover you can never truly put aside) and Naruto is gone, is dead, and so she must carry on. Team Seven minus one, only it is the one no one ever thought would leave. Constancy, like the sun; but Sasuke is constant, too. Like the moon. Like the stars. Distant and cold and a little bit _not-whole_.

Only a little bit, though. Only a little bit.

So she does the dishes and dries them and places them in the dishwasher and goes out for groceries. They need tomatoes, she knows, and rice and oatmeal and seaweed and she feels a strange craving for very salty cashews, so she buys some. They are neither salty nor as satisfying as she thought they would be. _Story of my life_, she thinks, and munches away.

Tsunade-shishou wants her in the hospital by eleven; her hours have been rather lax ever since she married Sasuke. No one wants anything to do with the traitor. Some don't even want anything to do with the traitor's wife, even if she was Tsunade-hime's prize student and Uzumaki Naruto's best friend.

The war is over and nothing is the same.

She files papers and fills out forms in Tsunade's office, something she is both overqualified and underqualified to do, but it is all that is left for her to do. People loved her during the war, when she healed them and saved them and rescued them. But people are fickle, she knows, and sighs and forges Tsunade's signature before placing the form to her right.

_Naruto_, she mourns. Naruto, who shone like the sun and glowed like a star and loved like the best of them, no matter how often he killed. Naruto, who _believed_ in honor and glory and pride and friendship. Naruto, who was everything that anyone could have wanted him to be. Naruto, who is dead.

Sakura still believes that everything would have been fine if Naruto had lived. Maybe she would have married him. Maybe they would have lived together and trained together and had quintuplets together and fought every day, all day, and it would have been beautiful, even if she didn't love him. Not that way. Not anymore.

Instead, she is trapped in a loveless marriage with a man she _does _love that way, and she wonders how it happens, sometimes. She wonders how she failed so much. Maybe someday she'll know. Probably not, but maybe.

_I'll never see Naruto again_, she thinks, and this is true. Wherever Naruto is, she does not deserve to go there, because she… she did _what? _She broke the faith, broke the promise, _failed_. She failed to save him and she failed to save Konoha and she failed to save Sasuke, and the best she can do is great drunk every week and sleep beside him at night and cook dinner for him and work on mindless paperwork at the hospital that once needed her.

_Naruto didn't want this_, she thinks. But Naruto believed, and Naruto was strong, and Naruto _inspired _belief, in ways that she doesn't.

On the way home, she buys a wishing boat, and sails it down the river. That, too, is a ritual. Every day, another wishing boat, another trip down the river. She turns away before she watches it sink.

_Every day_, she thinks, and it makes her so very, very tired. _Every day_.

**-69-**

Next week, she only makes it to nineteen before the clock strikes zero-zero.

The week after, fifteen.

Ten.

Seven, _no_, eight. (Seven, she believes, is a number never to be defiled by the burn of alcohol.)

Five.

She doesn't try the week after that, though she doesn't sleep, either. She goes downstairs and takes out the champagne and toasts her mirror image, reflecting off the stainless steel refrigerator. It is distorted and hideous. _Just like me_, she thinks. _Just like me. _

Champagne is an alcohol for parties, for celebrations. It is an alcohol for happy times; for the opening of new museums and the signing of treaties and for weddings. They had good champagne at their wedding, she remembers. Very good champagne. A 1987, she thinks, or maybe a 1986. From before the war. From somewhere very far away, a very small brewery… she remembers crossing the Great Naruto Bridge to get to it.

Or what is left of the Great Naruto Bridge. It extends maybe five yards over the cliff from either side, and the edges are charred and smoke-blurred. It is a victim of the bombs, most like; just like he was.

_Bastards_, weren't even brave enough to kill him face-to-face, had to resort to bombs and under-handed tactics and attacking from _highhighhigh_ up in the sky, where he couldn't strike back at them.

But this is the way of the ninja, she knows. If she had wanted false honor, she would have gone to the samurai. They still have honor (_aristocracies, medals, honors, glories_). But she is shinobi, and this is the way of the shinobi. She knows this.

She sniffs the champagne, delicately, lets the liquid run over her palate and smiles at the taste. Wedding champagne always tastes better than other champagnes. She is surprised that this one does not taste bitter; it is, after all, her own. If her life were a movie, it would taste bitter and she would probably be spitting it out into the sink. Or over the table. Or over Sasuke.

But Sasuke isn't even here. If it were a movie, he would be. And doesn't she deserve a movie? Doesn't she deserve glory and honor and maybe a happily-ever-after? Doesn't she? After paying all this, after paying all her innocence and all her honor and all her genius and love and talent to this cause, this goal, doesn't she deserve just a _little _happiness?

But that is a silly question, she knows. No one _deserves _anything. Not in her line of work.

**x0x**

And there you go, a whole shitload of angst and no character or plot development at all. No idea where this one is supposed to go, but I hope you had fun reading it! (Oh, and as a result of popular demand, I am working on a _sequel _to _resistance_. It should probably center on Sakura again, but I'm planning on bringing in a _lot _more characters. I also edited that first chapter for better flow, fewer typos, and better dialogue. Please inform me of any errors that still exist. Thank you.)


	3. resistance, part b

first_last_

experiment #o1.b

(a continuation of resistance.)

x0x

It doesn't rain in Citadel anymore; the wards keep the moisture out, just as they keep out the bombs. The officials appreciate that, the ones that can afford water with which to keep their flowers luscious and their trees majestic and their grass green. The ones that can afford to buy water and fill their bathing pools and drink their fill, all day, every day.

But you, you and your neighbors? You live every day with the knowledge that the government will not let you die, but neither will it let you live. You live knowing that every day you and your family will be allowed the precise amount of food and water with which you can survive, if you are unable to support yourself, and no more. You will be offered medical care. You will be offered an elementary education.

You've always wanted more, though. You've always wanted to be able to wear beautiful clothes and buy trinkets made before the war and get drunk on good wine. But this is all that life has offered you; you with your drunken father and your desperate mother and your brothers and sisters, too thin to be healthy and too healthy to be taken in by the government.

The government does nothing, _nothing_. They promised you everything, you know. Some days, if you are lucky, you can still listen to recordings of the government's promises, back when the Capitol was glistening white and the marble steps leading towards it were uncracked. Or maybe you are delusional, a bit, because the Capitol can never fall out of disrepair. The politicians and aristocrats clamber up and down the steps and in and out of those doors and dine on fine wine and rich food and do nothing for you country, for Citadel.

They do not stop the bombs.

They just stop you from hearing them.

x0x

It was a cold winter evening, one of those missions where she never knew exactly where she was going or exactly what she was doing, where she went by faith alone and trusted that the robotic animal leading her around was really one of _ours_, and not one of theirs. Inuzuka was good, but they were not infallible.

But in front of her strode the tall, lithe body of Inuzuka Hana, a woman she just met yesterday and already trusted. She was large and striking, brown hair and dark skin and sharp teeth and all. Ino instinctively trusted her, and that is all one really has, in this business. Trust, faith, honor, belief.

Behind her walked Shikamaru, with his characteristically silent slouch, and behind him walked Chouji, the last of their team. Hana was not really a member, but for this one they needed a dog, and not even Shikamaru's genius could learn to cooperate with an animal within a day, and so they had Hana.

They had trusted in Hana, trusted in the dog and in Chouji and in the precipice upon which they were walking. They had trusted in the mission they were given, to set fire to the collector's office - collectors were tax collectors, only they never called them taxes, anymore. They were donations, for the common good of the people, and they were not really mandatory; one really only had to pay them if one expected to live in reasonable comfort.

The dog never warned them of attack; it was knocked out by a pre-war electromagnetic pulse, something that should never have existed and which the robots have since been made impervious to. Hana was next, as the most formidable in the group, knocked off the precipice before Ino could see what had happened. She never put up that great a fight, anyways; the dogs were her pride and joy, and that one in particular had been her love.

The next bolt came towards Ino and Shikamaru, who had nowhere to run on the ledge. It was Chouji, in the end, who saved their lives, throwing himself in front of the weapon and granting them the time to finish the mission.

They finished the mission. And then they took his body home. That's the important part.

The unimportant part is that he'll never wake up.

But it was all for the mission. All for the Cause.

And so it was worth it.

Chouji would have thought so.

x0x

Ino hates the rain. It slides off the wards, smearing her view of the sun and the clouds, and darkens everything, almost imperceptibly. No one relies on the sun anymore, but there is something that she has always liked about it. It is comforting. It is soft. It is a warm glow, in contrast to the false, bright fluorescent lights that, no matter how hard the experimenters try, can never be as nurturing as the light of the sun.

Or so Ino thinks, anyways. She has never been out of Citadel in sunlight, and only twice in the darkest of nights. It was not raining, then.

But it was raining the night Chouji left. Rain splattered against the wards, and you could see the droplets sliding down the dome.

And so Ino hates the rain, because it makes her remember. It makes her remember Chouji, who was her brother and her teammate and her friend; it makes her remember the days when she trusted Inuzuka dogs, though she can hardly afford to mistrust them now; and it makes her remember Shikamaru. She remembers Shikamaru as he was, as she dreams he someday will be.

She is woman; Citadel represses instincts, but it cannot repress this one. She knows, in her most secret of hearts, that Shikamaru believes. She knows he is afraid. And she knows that someday, he will break the bonds that he has put on himself.

The only question is when.

x0x

Sakura lives in a very modern, very comfortable apartment building. In the suite (_collection of barren rooms_) across from hers lives Uzumaki Naruto, son of the only Chancellor who might actually have cared about Citadel.

He was murdered.

It wasn't pretty.

And so Uzumaki Naruto is Resistance, but not quite. Not really. He is one of those members who is always drifting, never quite here or there. Never quite trusted. Sakura trusts him, though, because once he saved her life.

Not that that is enough for her trust, usually. There have been many who have saved her life… _Sasuke_, she remembers, distantly, and pushes the thought of her head. She has had enough of moping over lost love never to be regained. _Enough_.

But the whispers still come, at night and when she is eating and when she is showering and when she is training. The whispers always come, and she is weak and useless before them, no matter how strong she is elsewhere. _Sasuke-kun_, something very broken inside her moans. Her mind cannot help but remind her of the little boy, the little boy who saved her even before Ino did, even before Naruto did, back when life was over and the bombs were coming and everything was ending.

_He left_, she reminds herself, often. But words and logic cannot fool her heart, and so she knows she loves him.

She simply does not want to.

x0x

Uzumaki Naruto does not remember his father. He has one photograph of him, a smiling blonde man and his red-haired whirlwind wife, and the baby clutched between them. He does not remember his mother, either, but the loss, to him, is not as harsh.

Maybe it is because he does not stare her in the mirror every morning, as he does his father. Maybe because he does not imagine the whip of shame curling across his cheek, as he realizes how his father failed. How Citadel failed.

Uzumaki Naruto knows the Resistance - he knows the pink-haired woman across the hall from him, who watches him, sometimes. He knows she is Resistance. He knows she trusts him. He knows she knows who he is, and he knows she knows he knows, and still she does not speak. She smiles at him in the lift and in the lunch lines, when their schedules coincide.

She is a medic, he thinks, and probably a good one. The Resistance is full of those, the good ones, the best. Do they have room for him, the son of a man who failed them? He has often wondered this, but the answer never really comes.

And that is why he has never followed her, though she has often cast him those half questioning glances over her shoulder, when he catches her key-coding her apartment door, lips barely moving as she talks to no one.

She is waiting. He wonders what for.

x0x

"Tsunade," the voice calls, and she stirs, hand rising to block the false light from reaching her eyes. Someone has pulled the shades up, and light is streaming in and striking her sensitive eyes. She blinks, twice, and then three times more, and when the sparkles before her eyes finally fade, she sees the brown-haired woman at the foot of her bed, arms crossed and foot tapping.

"Shizune," she says, and is mildly surprised. Normally, they do not call her until… her eyes find the clock beside her bed and she sighs. Noon, already. _Five more minutes_, she is tempted to say, but she has duties to attend, people to help, lives to save. Five more minutes is _literally _life or death, and they are probably calling her to Institution now. She should go.

And so she does. She climbs out of bed and mechanically walks to her closet and pulls on her clothing, tying her long blond hair back. She is too old for this, though she does not look it. The life extensions have not yet begun to run out for her, she who has saved countless lives and has boundless fame. She could live forever, but the face in the mirror never shows her real age, anymore.

She is too old for this.

But she must go on, because Resistance needs her.

_Someday, though… _and Shizune watches her teacher walk out of the room and down to the transportation pods and wishes she were stronger. Wishes she were better. Wishes she were enough, so that Tsunade-shishou could finally, _finally _rest.

She deserves it.

x0x

Hinata spots Aburame Shino the moment she enters the restaurant, and believes she would have suspected it was him even if she had not been given a picture. She pretends not to, though, and walks up to the computer, typing in his name. _Aburame Shino_, and the machine whirs softly and a waitress on roller blades and carrying a silver tray comes towards them. Her nametag reads _Lilieth_, and long, silky red hair trails out behind her.

"Table Five," she chirps in unaccented Universal, and leads Hinata towards the designated table, where the man sits, and leaves.

"Hyuuga Hinata," the man says, and his voice is deep and uncompromising and a little soft. He speaks with the soft lilt of the desert people, she notes. Distinctive, and probably fake.

"Aburame Shino," she says, and smiles at him. He is probably identifying her accent now. Her Universal is flawless, she knows, but she still speaks with the arrogant slants of her House. Those accents never fade, no matter how hard she tries.

"You are having the fish?" she asks, glancing at his touch-screen. He nods, but does not make an effort to carry on the conversation.

She orders a salad, a miso soup, and a light, delicate wine; he has the fish, and a glass of ice water. There are fourteen people in the restaurant, besides themselves; then there is the waitress Lilieth, and at least two other waiters - a girl and a boy, probably related. She quietly excuses herself to use the restroom.

On the way there, she locates the two emergency exits, the smoke alarms, the sprinklers, and the windows large enough to fit through, and manages a peek into the kitchen. A staff of only five, she notes. How strange.

And then she goes into the restroom, has her hands misted and rinsed, and reappears at Shino's side with a calm smile, reclaiming her seat.

"It was nice of you to wait for me," she tells him with another small, soft smile, and picks up her chopsticks.

"Left rear," he tells her, and she sighs. The testing has, it seems, already begun. "Redhead in a cream-colored dress, eating mutton and very drunk, with a slightly less drunk man in a suit," she says, softly. "The music," he says. "Chopin," she answers, without missing a single beat. "I hate that man." He smiles.

They walk out together as Neji arrives from down the street. Neji has his overprotective streak - he always will, it seems, no matter how often they disagree. They are all Resistance, after all, and they must stick together. Shikamaru probably gave him the information, in fact. Shikamaru probably wouldn't see anything wrong with doing that.

"Hyuuga Neji," he says, crisp and clean in his business suit, with his long brown hair tied back and his eyes serious. At his side stands a petite woman, hair twisted up into buns tied with red ribbons, sheathed in a red cheongsam slit up to her knees. Hinata's eyes rake up and down her figure unobtrusively, identifying the knife pins in her hair and the daggers strapped to the inside of her thighs. The delicate little shoes she wears now are weapons, too, Hinata thinks - stilettos have often been disguised in the heels of ladies' shoes.

"You missed one," Tenten says, smiling, and flourishes her hand a little, as if indicating the ring she wears. _Ah_, Hinata smiles. _Twist and poison_. "A nice touch," she says. "Has my dear cousin proposed yet?"

Tenten nearly chokes, but manages to cover it up with a high-pitched laugh. Her eyes glisten at the prospect of a friendly spar, but Neji hurries her on.

The last Hinata hears before she and her teammate walk on towards the fountain park is Tenten's laughter, again, low and soft.

**x0x**

A sequel to Resistance, or experiment #o1. Introducing a lot more characters, making problems for myself, as usual. To clarify, the person at the top is a _different _person. I wrote the first one as a male, and now the second is a female. It is only to show how suppressed and stuff the people are by Citadel. I don't think this one is as good as the first, but hey… what can I do?


	4. because he will love her

Disclaimer: I do not own _Naruto_.

Summary: The first time she meets him, she tells herself to love him. FugaMiko.

because he will love her

Fugaku has always looked for her, among the Uchiha – a single black head among the others, just as graceful and delicate and porcelain-pale. Just another pawn, he thinks, almost dismissively. Just another nothing, just another girl who will never do anything more strenuous than pour tea, who will never activate her Sharingan, and will never feel the loss of it.

And then he sees her, tripping along besides her mother. She smiles, large and bright and unassuming.

Someday, she will be taught to cage that smile behind polite ones that do not show her beautiful, strong teeth. Someday, she will be taught to walk slowly and gracefully, to bind her strong young legs beneath layers and layers of kimono. But today, in this moment, he thinks he sees his first glimpse of freedom, of true happiness.

The next time he sees her, she has already changed. She is graceful and slender, with long legs – thin, but not through exercise. He doubts that she could handle even the lightest of his regulation weapons. He watches her, calmly, analytically, and she bows and hastily walks away.

And he thinks about what he sees in her eyes – that she is still that child, eager to please and happy to be alive, and surrounded with love. And confused. There is something in those eyes that calls to him, and, watching her back in the moment before he closes his eyes once again, he thinks that she _is _different.

It is rare to find an uncrushed spirit in the Uchiha, just as it is rare to find a white flower amongst the red. That afternoon, he finds his father and suggests that he (finally) meet his bride. His father is, of course, surprised; who would not be? Fugaku had never before even considered meeting his bride before their marriage date.

On the appointed day, she appears in the chamber, bows to the members, and kneels before them on the unforgiving tatami floors. He spends that meeting watching her, picking out the mannerisms that make her a civilian. She eats with her right hand, but uses her left almost more fluidly.

Probably born left-handed, he thinks. It is a barbaric thing, forcing children to favor the right hand, and predictable. He wonders if his own children would be born left-handed, and if he would ever force them to behave otherwise.

She blinks to a beat, a steady one, and slowly; her lids go down quickly and up slowly, as though she does not wish to see what is before her eyes. She chews exactly twenty times on her meat, and ten times on her vegetables, but on her rice she chews twice. Her grip on her chopsticks is exact, and her hair is part directly down the center.

He wonders if she knows that he has watched her before, elsewhere, and that her hair has been nowhere near the perfection it is today. But she is talking about something – not chattering, because that would indicate familiarity; not rambling, because that would indicate nervousness. Her voice is soft and subservient, and he hates it.

"Hn," he manages in reply, and her (nearly) crestfallen face makes him feel just a touch guilty. Just a little bit, he maintains, because _Uchiha Fugaku _does not feel guilty. He is the Heir, and she is… she is his bride, and he will make her happy. It does not help that he cannot, in this moment, think of anything to say.

So he kneels more rigidly than ever, eats his food, sips his tea, and listens to her increasingly agitated voice. At the end of the meeting, as he walks her to the door, he tells her that he will meet her, one week from today, at the gates of the District. She looks strangely shocked as she nods and thanks him.

He thinks that he has done well, this first meeting. He has done everything his father asked him to do; he has been polite, has listened to what she has said, has even pretended to appreciate her presence in his home.

Which is not true.

Because his home is dark and dry and empty. It is, he thinks, a husk of what a home should be; all the affectations and none of the… none of the _love_. Which is, he has read and seen, what a house should contain: laughter, and light, and love. None of which are here.

So, no, he does not appreciate her presence here, even though it lights up his house and maybe someday could bring the laughter into it, laughter and _love_.

He does not appreciate her presence here because she does not belong here, because she does not belong in the dark - he can feel it choking her, can feel her gasping on that infernal darkness, and he hates it nearly as much as he hates the protective feelings she arouses in his heart.

And these feelings are feelings he should not be feeling, except maybe for the Uchiha Clan as a whole, and maybe for Konohagakure. His loyalty must be to the Hokage first, and no girl is going to make him forget his duty.

So he will see her in a week, he thinks, or maybe not.

He tells himself that she does not matter, will not matter, even once they are married.

(He never sees his mother. Neither does his father.

When she watches them with her darkdarkdark Uchiha eyes - eyes just like theirs, only never bloodred, he thinks she knows true sadness.)

_This is_, his best friend tells him, _denial. You love her_, he says. _And anyways, she's hot as hell. _

But she is weak, isn't she?

You behave well when you meet her again, well enough. It is a cool meeting, a cold one on your part, though she chatters and laughs and strains. You try a little too hard not to react; the resulting expression is something that scares the servants.

You do not want her in your house, you think; you do not want her in your home; you do not want her in your private training grounds.

But it will become _her_ home, soon enough; it will be _her _training grounds, in a way. Even if she does not use them. Even if she would not begin to understand how to use them.

You go on your mission; strap the mask close to your face and feel the wind rush against your hair and the adrenaline through your blood and the warm spatter against your face and you think that this, _this _is beautiful.

(You know that you are young, still, and that in a few years you will be bitter and jaded and live for this, for the fight, for the rush; or maybe you will end up like your father, bitter and jaded and a little too wise, a little too truthful for your tastes. Cold and calculating and never, never loving.)

In the end, you make a mistake - a silly rookie mistake, and you burn your hand, just a little… just a little, you think, and do not allow your team medic to treat you. There are worse things to deal with, you think, as you slap a bandage haphazardly onto the back of your hand, leaving your fingers for later.

You kill the man who burned you, and then you kill the man who hurt your teammate, and then you level your regulation katana at the last team member, a woman. She looks like Mikoto, in a way, only Mikoto in a way that Mikoto will never be. Strong and fierce, teeth bared and eyes narrowed and waving her sex like a banner. You kill her.

And then you destroy the bodies and hide the evidence and go home, looking forward to a scalding shower and fresh clothes that do not bear bloodstains.

You never expect for Mikoto - the real Mikoto - to barge into your room unannounced, looking for all the world like she has the right to be there, like she has the upper hand. "Fugaku-san," she says, still facing the door. "I would like to love you very much. It is my duty as an Uchiha to marry you. Would it be so much to ask that you make this a littler easier on me? I understand that you may not want to marry me, but…" And here she trails off.

You study her back for a moment, note the way her clenched fists tremble, slightly; and then you reach out and place your hand on her shoulder, almost subconsciously. It _must _be subconsciously, you think with a frown, because you would not have done that, otherwise. You would not have _decided _to do that.

But no matter, because she is looking down at your hand with an expression of horror on her face, and you, reflexively, look down at it as well. It does, you decide detachedly, look rather disgusting.

And then she is apologizing, something that you have always found spectacularly annoying. It is necessary, perhaps, occasionally, to apologize… but it is _not _necessary to repeat one's apologies multiple… and then panic strikes you as the tears begin to leak down her cheeks. She is _not _crying.

She is _not_.

There is not way that she is… and then she sniffles and gropes in her bag for, you assume, tissues, and there is no way to deny it now.

You are a little amused and very relieved when her bag tumbles from her shoulder to the floor, the thump breaking the tension that had been clogging the air before you. And then you stare down at her bag, a smile twitching at your lips as you stare down at her pitiful attempt to block the contents of her bag from you.

A small stone jar has rolled to your feet, and you pick it up, careful to use your unwounded hand. _Interesting_, you muse, that such a small motion could cause such protestations to pour from her mouth. You listen, though, and the words are meek and subservient and soft, but they contain a passion you did not know she was capable of feeling, and so you listen.

Her eyes are a little too soft, a little too filled with trepidations, and - to relieve her worries, _only _to relieve her worries, and _only _because you despise worried women - you begin to unwrap your fingers. You are shocked when her small hands intercept yours, her head bowed as she gently removes the bandages that had been so haphazardly wrapped.

And you think, looking down at the back of her head and breathing in her scent, that there is something sweet, in this.

**-x-**

This was originally meant to be the sequel to _she will be loved_, but I never finished it. And this is what _this _story is for, isn't it?

For a little added fun, this is something I posted on my Facebook today. Let's see who can get the most right, hmm? Let's say that… whoever wins gets a request? Anything you want, barring yuri, yaoi, and things concerning characters and fandoms I don't know. (Actually, let's see if anyone _responds_. Maybe I'll post this on something else, too. Just for fun.)

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies  
2. Pick a quote from each one of them (use IMDb for help)  
3. Tag friends who would know the movies  
4. No googling/IMDb searching when guessing  
5. Guess all the ones you know even if someone already guessed it (but don't read their answers to get your answers - that's cheating). Everyone who guesses the movie will get their name by the quote. The person with the most correct guesses out of the 10 wins

1. I am determined to serve and give my life for my country... if our children can live safely for one more day it would be worth the one more day that we defend this island... For our homeland. Until the very last man. Our duty is to stop the enemy right here. Do not expect to return home alive.

2. Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?... Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you. If I go first, I'll wait for you there, on the other side of the dark waters. Be with me now.

3. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend; legend became myth.

4. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about, I give you the finger... and you give me my phone call. / There is no spoon. / It means, hang on Dorothy, cuz Kansas is going bye bye..

5. Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

6. The unconditional surrender of Germany has just been announced. At midnight tonight, the war is over. Tomorrow you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases... you won't find them. After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the world. We've survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves. Thank your fearless Stern, and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every moment. I am a member of the Nazi Party. I'm a munitions manufacturer. I'm a profiteer of slave labor. I am... a criminal. At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted. I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight, after which time - and I hope you'll forgive me - I have to flee.

7. You wanna explain the math of this to me? I mean, where's the sense of riskin' the lives of the eight of us to save one guy?/Hey, think about the poor bastard's mother/Hey, Wade, I got a mother, you got a mother, the sarge has got a mother. I'm willing to bet that even the Captain's got a mother. Well, maybe not the Captain, but the rest of us have got mothers.

8. Poland is no longer alone.

9. You don't have jurisdiction here! / We aren't here, which means when we open up on you and shred your bodies with automatic fire then this will never have happened.

10. All right, you proved your point. You broke into my vault. Congratulations, you're a dead man... I'm gonna get out of the car and drop you like third period French... But see, a pinch creates a similar electromagnetic pulse, but without the fuss of mass destruction and death. So instead of Hiroshima, you'd be getting the seventeenth century.


End file.
